The understanding of Fascism presents an insoluble problem for bourgeois liberals. The only comprehensive explanation – that it is the last resort of the class with which they align themselves in certain sorts of crises – is completely unacceptable. To accept it would be to accept that their own ideology of liberalism is merely adjusted to their interests of the moment and might have to be dropped for all the horrors of irrationalism should the situation demand it.

This latest compilation of essays on various sorts of fascism is scholarly and often interesting. But because it operates within these ideological limitations the movements dealt with can never be placed into a wider historical context. At best they merely offer material for the reader himself to add to the classic treatment of the subject: Trotsky’s writings on Germany.